Khaki is a type of fabric or the colour of such fabric. The name comes from the Persian word khak (dust/ashes) which came to English from India, specifically via the British Indian Army. khakis: There are two common, and not too dissimilar, definitions of the word "khaki": One is that it is a Hindi word meaning earth-coloured or dust-coloured; The other is that the idiomatic Hindi for faeces is "khaki" and, in fact, many ex-British Army colonialists are familiar with the word "khaki" as the equivalent of the English "shit". Regardless of its precise etymology, "khaki" refers to the colour of uniforms introduced by the army regiments in the 1880s. More accurately, the correct shade of "khaki" is the colour of "Multani Mitti", meaning "the mud of Multan". Multan was a well known military cantonment of British India (now in Pakistan).